In Part one of the series we talked about the basic steps you need to take as you undertake the journey of making your own simple website. To recap, the first step is to decide on the domain of choice and register it. As covered in the previous article this should be followed by or done concurrently with the acquisition of a hosting package. After you have purchased your web hosting, your hosting provider will give you your cpanel (control panel) details. As mentioned previously, it is via this cpanel that we will be installing our website. I believe we are all now set and our hosting and domains are ready :).

Now that we have refreshed our memories on what we covered in our previous lesson, let us move on to part 2 of the series where we learn how to install our wordpress and how we can access the dashboard. For those who are curious, WordPress is a content management system and this is the system we are going to be using to make our simple websites. We will be covering 2 different ways of installation and the control panel we will be using is Cpanel which is quite easy to use. The installation tools we are going to demonstrate are:

• WordPress Manager by Softaculous 
• WordPress Toolkit

Now let’s dive into the fun part! After receiving your login details navigate to the login link and log in. We will start by covering WordPress Manager by Softaculous and we will go step by step.

WordPress Manager by Softaculous

 After logging into your Cpanel dashboard, scroll down to the Software section and click on WordPress Manager by Softaculous. The section is shown below:

This action will take you to the dashboard (screenshot below) where you will install your WordPress. When you have reached this dashboard here are the steps you need to follow:

1.Click on ‘install’

2.Under the Software Setup section of the page that opens you will see a field that has your domain name, go to the ‘in directory’ field and delete the ‘wp’ that is there. Leave the field blank.

3.Scroll down and to your right you will see the section for Admin account settings where you can set your login credentials. Remove the default credentials and enter your own, make sure that your password is strong enough. Write down your credentials somewhere safe because you will need them to access your wordpress dashboard.

4.On your left you will find the section for your Site settings. This is where you enter your website’s name, preferably the company’s name. If you have a tagline you can enter it in the site description field or you can leave it blank.

5.After filling up the site settings section scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on ‘install’. You can enter your email address in the provided field if you would like to receive installation details.

After clicking on install a progress bar should be shown indicating that your wordpress is being installed. When the installation is complete you will be provided with two links(as shown below), one that will take you to your wordpress dashboard and one on which you can view your newly installed website. Make sure that you copy your login link (administrative url) and keep it somewhere so you won’t forget it.

WordPress Toolkit

WordPress toolkit is an alternative installation method for your WordPress. To install your website using this method you go to your cpanel dashboard and scroll down to the ‘Domains’ section and click on WordPress Toolkit.

Once the WordPress Toolkit dashboard has opened, follow these steps:

 1.Click on ‘Install’

2.Under the General section, the installation path should have your domain name, leave it as it is, In the website title field enter your website’s name or company name.

3.In the Administrator section enter the login details of your choice. You can generate the password or enter your own. Remember to write down your credentials somewhere safe.

4.Click on ‘install’ to install your wordpress.

The system will immediately start installing your wordpress as shown by the progress bar on the right side of your screen. Once installation is complete, you will be provided with the new website’s details as shown below:

To login, you can either click on the login button or use the link you find when you click on ‘setup’ as shown below. Make sure to keep your login link somewhere where you can easily access it.

After you are done with your installation you will find out that there will be a default website that will be displayed when you visit your website(shown below). This means that our installation was a success:)

Now we are done with part two of our series on how to make our own simple websites. In the next part we will be taking a tour of our WordPress dashboard. I hope we are all excited!

Please do not forget to share your new website links in the comment section to show us that you have succeeded at installing your wordpress . Let’s have fun:)

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Part one: Getting Started >>